An Invitation from Winter

Winter is about a month away now, but I can see her peering at me today. Her gray skies and motionless trees hang above my house, and I can almost feel her. Memories of wool socks on nights spent in a cabin, fires for keeping extra warm, and walks surrounded by my own crystalized breath - they’re tapping on my shoulder.

There’s something about winter that exalts the unknown. Foxes hidden in dens, the slow dying before spring, the quiet magic of a snowflake; it draws me in, yet at the same time, it scares me.

My therapist recently asked how I felt about surrender, about letting life happen as it will. I quickly responded with, “Nope, uh uh. I don’t do that.” I need to know that if I can’t control a situation, I can at least control my response and therefore control the outcome or the way I am impacted by the situation. However, winter invites me to think differently.

Winter, with its cold death, is somehow also beautiful. Naked trees allow me to see around and beyond them, to see what all year had been hidden. And as they surrender to unyielding weather and a relentless world, they still manage to provide shelter and warmth, budding back to life only months later.

What if I could do that? What if I could surrender? In such emptiness, I would see more parts of myself - shadows and treasures that have long been hidden - and I would manage, even in that empty state, to harbor life within during a slow rebuild from the inside out. I wonder: are the trees scared too, or do they simply surrender?